Chapter 4 - The Truth He Could Not Buy
“No,” Dominic said.
Norah gripped the windowsill.
“Prove it.”
He looked at Leila. “Can we contact his attorney?”
She considered him for a moment, then stepped into the hall.
Dominic stayed seated.
“Daniel found discrepancies in my uncle’s accounts. Victor said he had stolen from us. I believed him long enough to frighten an innocent man.”
“What does that mean?”
“I had Arthur bring him to a warehouse. I questioned him there.”
“Did you hurt him?”
“No. But he believed I would. That was enough.”
Norah remembered sending Daniel a calendar invitation. Conference room changed. Please use the rear entrance.
She had apologized for the inconvenience.
“Once I saw his records, I knew Victor was lying,” Dominic continued. “Leila arranged independent representation. Daniel left the state with his family because he was afraid of both of us.”
“Did you pay him to disappear?”
“I paid what he asked for relocation and lost income. His lawyer negotiated it. He owes me nothing.”
Norah watched his face, looking for the old smoothness, the confident sentence that made an ugly thing sound reasonable.
He offered none.
Leila returned. Daniel would speak by video, with his attorney present.
He appeared against a plain kitchen wall. Alive. Tired. A child’s drawing hung behind his shoulder.
“Norah,” he said. “I wondered when you’d find out.”
She sat down hard.
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I sent you there.”
“Victor sent me there. Dominic scared me. You booked a room.”
She began crying then, silently and with immense irritation at herself.
Dominic moved his chair back from the table, giving her space without making a performance of it. She noticed because the old Dominic would have tried to end the tears: a handkerchief, a solution, a call that made someone else responsible for fixing the moment. This time he sat with what he had caused. Norah wiped her face on a tissue and asked Daniel whether his daughter liked her new school. His expression softened. She did. She had joined the debate team. That small detail made the harm real in a way account numbers never could. An entire family had rebuilt its ordinary days around one man's capacity to frighten them.
Daniel waited.
When she could listen, he described the accounts. Victor had been stealing from his own organization, routing money through false vendors and charitable payments. Dominic’s attempt to close the illegal operations had threatened to expose years of theft.
“Why frame me?” Norah asked.
“Because your credentials touched everything, and you didn’t have enough power to fight back.”
Across the table, Dominic flinched.
Daniel noticed.
“Money isn’t the same thing as protection,” he told him. “You should have learned that sooner.”
“I should have,” Dominic said.
After the call, Norah’s attorney asked whether she wanted to leave.
Norah looked at the duffel beside her chair.
Yesterday, escape had meant a different name and a mountain village. Now it meant refusing to let someone else explain her life for her.
“I want to clear my name.”
“We can work on that from somewhere safe,” her attorney said.
“Good. And I want my father moved when his doctor says it’s appropriate. Somewhere I choose.”
Dominic nodded.
“You don’t get a vote,” she told him.
“I know.”
It was the first answer he had given that day which cost him nothing to say and everything to honor.
Leila placed a document in front of him.
“If you cooperate, investigators will ask about your conduct too. I can negotiate process. I cannot promise immunity.”
He read the first page.
Norah watched him reach for the pen, then stop.
For one sick moment, she thought he would bargain with her safety.
Instead, he looked at her attorney.
“Put in writing that Norah’s housing and her father’s care remain funded regardless of whether she testifies against me.”
Norah’s throat tightened.
“Through an independent administrator,” he added. “No contact required.”
Leila nodded.
Dominic signed.
Outside the office, footsteps sounded on the stairs.
The bakery downstairs had not opened yet.
Leila’s receptionist called from the front room, her voice strained.
“There’s a woman here asking for Miss Hayes.”
May you like
Norah turned toward the door.
The woman waiting there wore her father’s nursing badge.
